EPA bashing: A caution from Reichert

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should be kept from “overstepping their bounds” but not made to walk the plank, Republican Rep. Dave Reichert said in an interview Thursday.

The congressman’s remarks came during a week in which congressional Republicans have talked of eviscerating, defunding and even abolishing the EPA — an agency created under GOP President Richard Nixon.

Ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a likely 2012 Republican presidential candidate, told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., that the EPA should be abolished and replaced.

“The EPA is based on bureaucracy centered in Washington issuing regulations and litigation and basically opposing things,” Gingrich charged.

The House Republican leadership on Thursday unveiled proposals that would cut $1.7 billion from the EPA’s budget.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson clashed at a hearing with Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, an oil industry ally famous for apologizing to BP after the Obama administration made the oil giant set up a fund to pay for damages from the Gulf Oil Spill. Barton charged that EPA is trying to put a “straitjacket” on domestic energy development.

The new House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, has introduced legislation to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, has introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

Reichert took a different tack on Thursday, as he introduced legislation that would put the Pratt River, in eastern King County, into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. He defended the existence of the EPA.

“It certainly serves its purpose in keeping track of where this country is going (in environmental policy),” he said in an interview. “It should have a role in melding the administration’s energy policy.

But, without being specific, Reichert said the EPA “may be overstepping their bounds” and that it is right for House Republicans to ask: “Have they stepped into the realm of congressional oversight.”

Reichert, who represents as Eastside district, may be put on the spot as pressure builds on EPA. Washington Republican congressmen have found themselves on the hot seat before.

In 1995, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay tried to strip the EPA of enforcement authority in 17 different fields, including air emissions and water pollution and control of toxins.

DeLay was turned back on a close vote, after a small group of House Republicans broke ranks. Reps. Jack Metcalf and Rick White, R-Wash., voted against taking away the EPA’s powers.